


Piece by Piece

by Sarai



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 04:13:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19099516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarai/pseuds/Sarai
Summary: It’s natural to want to hurt someone who hurt you. To want to take them apart, piece by piece.Even if it is your own fault for being stupid enough to love someone.Even if you let them be your vulnerability.It's still natural, when they are taken from you, to hate the one who stole them away.(Or, the first steps down a long road of corrupting revenge!)





	Piece by Piece

It’s natural to want to hurt someone. To want to make them suffer the way you suffered, the way they _made you_ suffer. To want to make them pay.  
  
It’s natural.  
  
I loved someone and he took her from me. I was foolish to ever love her—to ever love anyone. I allowed myself to become vulnerable. I created a weakness, but can I be faulted for failing to see how he would exploit it?  
  
Not that he even realized what he was doing, not that he thought beyond his own ends to what it would cost others.  
  
I should be planning. I should be considering my next steps. This is Ketterdam, a city that never truly rests, never truly ceases to offer opportunities to a man who knows where to look for them. I should be—there are games to be had, money to be made.  
  
Always money to be made in Ketterdam.  
  
_I should be planning._  
  
I should be… but I’m not.  
  
The only plan I can focus on is the one taking a hazy shape in my mind, the one that will assuage my pain. No—not assuage. Transfer. Transfer from me to him, to his life, the life I will take apart one piece at a time.  
  
I’m sitting instead, alone, comfortable. How can I be comfortable and in this level of pain at the same time? I ask the question of myself. I ask it of the shifting light as I tilt the glass in my hand, regarding the brandy that fails to numb this pain.  
  
The drink burns going down. It burns as much as my hatred for _him_ , for that rotten little… _it’s his fault, all his fault!_  
  
Some people don’t know what’s good for them.  
  
He has cost me everything. Everything. I am not a fool, how did I not see this coming? Why? I anticipate, it’s what I do. It’s how I win. I can see three moves ahead, play out the game before my opponent makes his first move. So how was I blindsided?  
  
He has cost me everything and, piece by piece, I will take everything from him.  
  
I cannot claim innocence, not entirely. I was duped, I allowed myself to be lulled. No one is innocent, I should have remembered that. Had I anticipated _this_ , I could have acted sooner, I could have stopped it.  
  
I down the brandy in one gulp and pour myself another. Who is going to stop me? Here I sit, the king of my own castle, a lonely king without his queen.  
  
Here I sit.  
  
I miss her.  
  
I miss her.  
  
I love her— _loved_ her—I… I feel it, the wound her absence leaves in me.  
  
The glass flies from my hand, brandy splashing the wall, soaking into the floorboard. I lever myself out of the chair, spurred by a sudden passion to—to what? _To what, you damned fool?_ It’s too late to save her!  
  
Not too late to say one final goodbye. So I do. I say my goodbye in my fingertips trailed along the bed we shared, in a deep inhalation of the clothes she left behind that still hold her scent. You would be quite mistaken to think that sound was a sob as I pressed my face into her shirt. It was simply too much brandy unsteadying my system.  
  
No, I am not crying. I am planning now. I breathe in her scent and I plan.  
  
Piece by piece.  
  
Piece by piece, I will take him apart.  
  
There is a fury in me the way I shed the trappings of business in Ketterdam, the way I tear at the knotted tie around my neck. It would be different if she were here. The memory—I would banish it if I could, the feeling of her hands loosening my tie.  
  
Not the feeling—the ghost. She is gone. All I have left is her ghost. Her ghost loosening my tie while my own liquor-clumsy hands yank it off, the ghost of her smile as she teased open the shining buttons of my waistcoat.  
  
Tie and waistcoat both fall to the floor. Maybe, when dawn comes, I’ll have put away the pain. I’m stronger than it is. I—  
  
My promises to myself are interrupted by footsteps.  
  
_Him_.  
  
That beast who has cost me everything. Taken the love of my life.  
  
The one whose life I will take apart piece by piece.  
  
He doesn’t knock, just steps into the room, and only the thought of making him hurt as he has made me hurt keeps me from reaching for something heavy to smash in his head.  
  
Piece by piece.  
  
It wouldn’t be difficult…  
  
For a long moment, he just stares at me. Looks.  
  
“Have you been crying?” he asks.  
  
_How dare he…_  
  
Shall I slap him? Give him something to cry about? It would be satisfying, but better perhaps to savor until the right moment. There can only be one first.  
  
“Of course not. Only an infant relies on tears to soothe his hurts. A man accepts pain and moves on.”  
  
Quiet, he nods. There’s cautious hurt in his red-rimmed eyes, a question— _should_ this hurt?  
  
Yes, you wretch. It had better. He is slow, but he will learn. Oh, yes. There are things I cannot teach, but I can teach him to hurt.  
  
“I…”  
  
“What do you want?”  
  
“I miss her.”  
  
A sneer twists my mouth. I feel it, how right it is against how I feel now. He misses her. Perhaps he should have thought of that before he took her from me.  
  
Yet, the thought at the back of my mind: _don’t speak her name._ I couldn’t bear it, to hear her name in his voice.  
  
“She’s gone,” I say.  
  
“Yes—”  
  
“ _She’s gone._ Do you understand?”  
  
“I… yes, but… I miss her.”  
  
“That will change nothing. She’s gone, she’s not coming back. It’s best for you to think of the future instead.”  
  
His lip wobbles. Such a show of weakness.  
  
Piece by piece, and he may as well be drawing targets.  
  
I crouch in front of him, regard him, hold his chin in my fingers. I could snap his little jaw from his skull now. How satisfying to consider that I could cause him a shred of the harm he has caused me. The ruin he has left my life…  
  
My breath must smell like brandy. His smells like milk. He tries to recoil; I tighten my hold. He squirms, but only for a moment. Good. _You are mine. Mine until you are broken in every piece, until I am through with you._ I stare into his face, so many soft lines, wide eyes.  
  
How sweet he looks.  
  
How innocent.  
  
Some rebellious piece of me thinks he is simply tarnished, not evil but in need. I make myself learn his face again, the face of an enemy.  
  
The worst monsters never look like monsters, do they?  
  
I release him hard enough to make him stumble back.  
  
“Why are you here now?”  
  
“I couldn’t sleep.”  
  
“You have a nanny, do you not?”  
  
“Y-yes…”  
  
“I don’t have time for this. I’m very busy. When I have time for you, it will be scheduled.”  
  
Hurt in his eyes. Good. He will learn what it is to hurt.  
  
“Just one story tonight? Please?”  
  
“Are you _begging_ me?”  
  
Silence. Yes, that was too complex for his little mind, wasn’t it?  
  
“You represent this house. This family. You do not beg.”  
  
“Yes, Papa.”  
  
“Good. Go back to bed now.”  
  
“Can’t you walk me there?”  
  
“What did I tell you about begging?”  
  
“But it’s dark!”  
  
“You made it here. You’ll make it back. Go on, Wylan.”  
  
He goes, but not before I have the satisfaction of seeing a tiny piece of him crumple inside his eyes.  
  
It will be the first of many.

**Author's Note:**

> It had bugged me that Van Eck kept Wylan so long. Why not get rid of him earlier? He's hardly the sentimental type... and to me that was what it came to, he's taking his revenge. Why be so cruel? Because he can. Because he likes to. A bit like Kaz with Pekka...and this fic was born.


End file.
